Reducing Phantom Traffic Jams

A phantom traffic jam occurs when vehicles tend to pile up in a grid lock type of situation despite there being no actual problem. The flow of traffic is an often studied aspect and a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, CSAIL have revealed that there is one single thing that all drivers can do to ensure that such a phantom traffic jam does not occur.

Guess what that is? Avoid tailgating the driver in front of you! What’s tailgating? Driving very close to the vehicles ahead of you, sort of riding their tail. The MIT professor involved in the study, Berthold Horn, recommends something he calls “bilateral control”. This entails maintaining an equal distance from the vehicle in front of you as well as from the vehicle behind you.

As per Horn, by simply maintaining this distance constantly drivers are likely to reach their destinations twice as fast. It will not only save time, but also reduce fuel costs for those driving as breaking and accelerating constantly tend to consume more fuel than going at a steady speed for the same period of time.

The findings of this scientific study may not make sense to human beings who want to rush in without looking first, but it is something to think about the next time you tailgate the car before you.